Live, Live, Live

Wow. Blink and two weeks have flown by.

We hired a new reporter, Sarah. Sarah is blonde and small, and she looks like Naomi Watts except a little softer. She has a great voice, but her delivery is a little weird. She tilts her head to the side a funny way when she speaks, and she likes to stand sideways when she's on camera. She said it makes her look thinner. This is her second job in the business.

Sarah has been assigned to the night shift, which means we'll be working together. We seem to have hit it off pretty well, so I think it's going to be fun. She has already displayed a tendency toward sarcasm.

She was on dayside Monday and Tuesday, but they put her on nightside with me Wednesday night. Of course, Wendy wanted a live shot. Now that I'm trained on the truck, Wendy wants live shots every night. Sarah was a little nervous about it, because her previous station never did live shots.

When I drove into the parking lot Wednesday afternoon to report for work, I noticed Jake the engineer out in the pen where we keep the microwave van. Actually, I only noticed Jake's legs, sticking out from under the van. After a few seconds, Jake's feet jerked up off the ground and hung in the air for a minute. Then he started laughing and let them back down again. I wondered what the hell he was doing, but I was running late and didn't have time to go find out.

Flash forward to later that evening. Sarah's still not quite accustomed to our system of doing things, and it took her some time to get her package finished and voiced. We were working out of the station, so I was acutely aware of the time creeping up on me as I edited the package. I needed to leave myself time to get the truck out to the live location and set up the shot. I wasn't really happy with the final product, but at least I finished it. We finally left forty-five minutes before the show. Sarah seemed to be in a bad mood, nervous about the time.

Even with my limited experience, I should have had plenty of time. We didn't have far to go. I parked the truck, jumped out to do my walkaround (and look up!) to make sure the site was suitable and cranked up the generator. After a few minutes of warmup I hit the main breaker, while Sarah repeated her prepared copy out loud for the seventeenth time. The genny bogged down as usual as the racks came to life, then recovered. Time to raise the mast.

I pushed the switch up. Nothing happened.

"Uh oh," I said.

Sarah stopped reading her copy. "Uh oh what?" she asked in a mistrustful tone.

"It didn't work."

"Huh," she said.

I just stood there and looked up at the dish for a minute. I was drawing a complete blank on what to do. Every time I have hit that switch before, the air compressor that extends the mast has kicked on and sent the dish on its normal ascent. This time there was no compressor noise, no sound of air leaking from the mast, no nothing.

I'm a fairly analytical person and can often troubleshoot things if I understand the system. I checked the breaker panel, but the compressor's breaker was on. I climbed up to look at the mast itself, thinking maybe it was bound by the cable, but it was free. I had no idea what to do next, so I made a huge mistake and called Wendy.

"I can't get the mast up on the truck," I said.

"You know you're live in half an hour," she responded. Well, no shit. That's kinda why I was calling.

"Uh, yeah, but I don't know what to do," I said.

"I'm not sure what you think I can do about it," she said. Actually she was right. I shouldn't have bothered asking her.

"Are there any engineers there?" I asked.

"No, they all go home after the six," she said. "Call Rick [the chief photographer]."

"Okay, yeah, I have his number."

"And what about my live shot? You think you'll be able to get it?"

"Uh, I don't know," I said. "I need somebody to tell me how to get this mast up."

"I thought you were trained on it," she said.

"Yes, I WAS trained on it. It isn't working right."

"Call Rick," she said. "Call me back and tell me when you get it fixed."

"Okay," I said, "But I'm short on time."

"Just get it fixed and call me back."

Sarah only heard my half of the conversation. "Is she going to scrap the live shot?" she asked.

"No," I said. "She wants me to fix it."

So I called Rick. He had me check the breakers. He had me look on top of the truck to make sure the cable wasn't in a bind. Wendy paged me while I was up there, but I had to ignore it. Rick gave up.

"Call Jake," he said. "I think he was workin' on it today."

Rick gave me Jake's number. By this time I only had twenty minutes to showtime. Wendy had paged me two more times. Sarah was asking me again whether we would get the shot.

"EEEYello!" Jake answered.

"Hey Jake, this is Max," I said. "I can't--"

"Max who?" he interrupted.

"Max from the station."

"Max, max... Oh, the new kid?"

"Yeah, that's me. Listen, I can't get the mast to go up on the live truck. Rick said you might be able to help."

"Sure I can," he said. "Take it on back to tha station. It don't work right now."

"Right," I said, "But I have a live shot in fifteen minutes."

"Not today you don't. I han't finished with it. I still got it disconnected."

My pager went off again. I was dreading talking to Wendy.

"So there's no way to get it working?" I asked.

"Not unless you want to do some rewiring," he said.

I was still on the phone with Jake when Sarah handed me her phone. Wendy had now called her to find out what was happening.

"Why haven't you answered my pages?" was the first thing she said. It was obvious that she was in a fit.

"I've been trying to get the truck fixed," I said.

"I told you to call me back. How am I supposed to plan for my fucking show if you don't tell me what the fuck is going on? Is it fixed?"

"No, Jake said he's still working on it and has the mast disconnected."

"What the fuck?" she said. "DAMMIT! Why didn't he tell me it was broken? Did you know about this?"

"Uh, no."

"Well. Shit. Let's see. So the live shot isn't going to happen at all?"

"No," I said. "Jake told me to bring the truck back."

"Uh. Is there any way to feed me a look-live?"

(A note to those who don't understand the technology here: If I can't tune the microwave signal to send back a live shot, I also can't send anything else back. A "look live" is a reporter standup shot to look like a live shot, but recorded to tape. If I couldn't get the live shot, I also couldn't send her video. She really should've known that.)

Obviously we didn't go live that night. It turned out that Jake had been working on the previously mentioned interlock system and had disconnected some things to try to make it work. He hadn't finished it. But he also hadn't bothered to tell anyone that the truck didn't work. CP Rick told me he had "words" with Jake about it, but that Jake just grinned and said, "Sorry."

Sarah was really quiet the rest of the night. I think she was angry. She didn't say much about it, except to ask me if I thought she would get in trouble for missing her shot.

"No," I said. "I don't see why you would get in trouble."

"You're right," she said. "It wasn't MY fault."

Nor mine. But somehow it wouldn't surprise me if I get blamed for it.